


Airborne in Daylight

by galacticproportions



Series: The Ripening Stars [5]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Ethical Dilemmas, Everything is slightly less of a mess, Force Bond (Star Wars), I love that there's an Ethical Dilemmas tag, Multi, This probably isn't how the Force works, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 10:40:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7754497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galacticproportions/pseuds/galacticproportions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Against all probability, nobody died, and nobody fell to the Dark. But they all know more than they did before, and now it's time to act on their knowledge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Airborne in Daylight

**Author's Note:**

> This is the thrilling (? I hope!) conclusion to The Ripening Stars. Deepest gratitude to lynx-eyed beta reader and fic enabler Nevanna, and to ineptshieldmaid, who pushed me to think about what this series could be. 
> 
> Title and epigram are from the same song, whose title I don't know, by My Gay Banjo.

_We are all our only hope to be free._

 

 

PROLOGUE

 General Leia Organa, leader of the Resistance, Huttslayer, daughter of the Old Empire's attack dog, sister of the Last Jedi, bites back her curses at the medics when they finally inform her that she can sit up in bed, and that her brother is coming to see her. A good leader never swears by accident. But her hand goes to her hair before she can stop it, and they send Threepio in to braid it for her.

 "Welcome to the Skywalker tradition of being part metal," Luke says when they let him in. Leia cuts her eyes at him. They've implanted a little device in her chest, they call it a pacemaker, to help regulate the beat of the heart that her detractors claim she doesn't have. He touches her shoulder gently with the non-metal hand, then crosses to settle in the medbay room's only chair. "They told me you should be able to get up in a couple of days."

 "They told me that too," Leia snaps. "And not a moment too soon, since while I was incapacitated, my brother sent away my best combat pilot, _and_ a Force-sensitive source of intel and budding strategist, _and_ the only sentient in the galaxy that I can apparently trust, on the eve of a major offensive."

 "To retrieve the galaxy's best hope," Luke says softly.

  _That was you at one point,_ Leia thinks but doesn't say. Some truths are too cruel, some costs too high, and anyway she's still helpless in this bed and needs Luke on her side. "I care for Rey," she admits instead. "But you think she's important in a larger sense?"

 "She's essential. Leia, everything we've learned so far suggests that the First Order is one thing and Snoke is another. They're uneasy allies, and he's making them his instrument, but their goals aren't identical and I doubt they know everything he's up to--"

 "I suppose you do."

 "Not yet," Luke says grimly, letting the interruption turn him aside. "But I may know a lot more when they bring Rey back. And before you try to rip my head off again about that, let me point out that no one besides Finn had the slightest chance of bringing her back. He's Force-sensitive, their bond is strong, and as you pointed out, he's a good strategist. He knows the First Order and he's got a lot more understanding of both compulsion and compassion than you or I will ever be able to muster. He's part of our hope, too."

 "And Poe?"

 Luke shrugs. "Finn can't fly. And they're a good team."

 "If he doesn't come back, I'm sending you up in his X-Wing."

 "And if that happens, I'll do my best for you," he says. "I always have. I'm sorry it's almost never been enough."

 The grief hits hard, then, draining through her, taking with it the ability to move or think or even see. She feels Luke come near to her again and open his mind, saying or thinking, she can't tell, "I would trade myself for him, Leia, in a second. In a second, if it worked like that, if it would bring him back," and she knows it's true.

 "I wouldn't," she says with numb lips. "I wouldn't trade myself for him." _I have a war to fight, and if I don't, who will?_

 "I know," Luke says, answering the spoken and the unspoken both. She thinks desperately, _I need to be the General now,_ and he catches that too: "I know you've already spoken with Statura and Tyek, but they have more detailed reports for you on the space-station offensive and the inoculation mission for the system the First Order is targeting. They've typed those up and I can send someone in with the datapads whenever you're ready. I can also have them brief you themselves if you'd prefer. What I have for you is more of an internal report. You know that before you--got ill, there were rifts and tensions in the Resistance, factions that were starting to pit themselves against each other rather than focusing on the common goal, especially since Starkiller's been knocked out and we're back to small attacks and defenses."

 Yes, of course she knew this; it's not like Luke to build up to things delicately. She listens attentively but with increasing weariness as he details the forming factions and the shifts in loyalty, the fissures and dissensions that seem, to him, deeper than the ordinary frictions of exhausted people doing difficult, dangerous tasks with limited resources and very little respite. "Is there any chance at all that Snoke's behind _this?"_

 "I'm sure he could exploit it with the Force if he could detect this place and took the trouble, but I think it's just people being people. They see a chance to make themselves look big, or work off a grudge, and it makes their sight short."

 "Stop telling me things I knew when you were still on the moisture farm."

 Luke ignores this. "The upcoming offensive could help--you have a lot of people here who are itching to light something up, and it's a big enough target that they'll find it both challenging and satisfying--but many of those same people are unhappy that you've also authorized the contact with Eregi. The team in charge of getting in ahead of the First Order and preparing Eregi to meet the invasion seem less irritated by the fact of the other mission, but no one likes to hear it heavily implied that the thing they've been tasked with is a waste of time and effort."

 " _Skip_ the statements about the human condition and..." _And tell me what you think I should do about this,_ she realizes that she almost said, and is appalled at her weakness. Over the years, she's developed a particular gift for getting advice without seeming to ask for it, while simultaneously allowing the advice-giver to feel like a key part of the decision. It should have taken more than a heart attack to make her rusty, clumsy, like a freshman senator, like a young woman overladen with responsibilities whose vastness she's only beginning to grasp.

 Then the feeling hits, an utter expansion of her senses to the galaxy entire, huge and intimate, the lines of light and darkness that connect her to the heart of a star and the veins in a leaf, the red lines of a poisoned wound and the murderous ores that make deadly weapons threaded through the skin of a planet, illuminated and shadowed and above all _poised,_ without a sense of catastrophe or longing.

 It passes, and the world is as it was, full of beauty but limping, strained, distressed.

 Luke is breathing as though he'd been running. His eyes are distant. "What in the name of the seven hellmoons was that?" Leia asks.

 "Something ... happened." It takes Luke a long time to say even that. Just as Leia's about to get up and strangle him, IV or no IV, he says, "Rey. I think Rey ... did something. Or _was_ something. Was everything." He looks like he might collapse; at least they're in a convenient place for it.

 "It wasn't her...dying. Was it?"

 "No. No. I don't think it was anything that's ever happened before. Certainly nothing I've ever felt before. Or read about. Or heard of." He moves his head like a man coming up from deep water. "I have to go try to figure out what happened. And to reach her--I might be able to, after--after that. I have to--" He stands, moves for the door. "I'll be back, probably later today. I'll send Statura and Tyek to you. But don't overdo it."

  _The hell you say,_ she thinks, but he's already gone. Leia Organa, widow, mother of a war criminal, daughter of a lost planet, sinks back against her pillows and closes her eyes.

 

*

 

Between wanting to fly undetected and making efficient use of the hyperlanes, it takes them about three days to get back to D'Qar from the moon where Rey almost embraced the Dark Side. Poe concentrates on flying the tub, shaving a little off their time here and there without getting too crazy, so he won't have to listen to Finn and Rey being strenuously patient with each other.

 "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

 "I want to talk about it but I don't know how."

 It's not just about trust, this time; it's that they've gone where he can't follow. He felt whatever it was that Rey did, or Finn did, or _they_ did--but dimly, like like the feeling of rightness when he's flying and executes a maneuver perfectly, running on a knifeblade between physics and death. He recognizes the Force, but he can't use it, and he doesn't pretend to know how high and deep it goes. He doesn't know what to do, except get them home. Which means it is about trust, in a way, after all.

 "Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to--"

 "No, I'm sorry, I was just meditating. Trying to. It's fine--"

 All this time they're keeping their hands off each other, which at least he understands; it's like he was with Finn on the outward voyage, when he knew he'd fucked up and didn't want to make it worse by impinging himself further, wanted to give Finn as much room as he needed to make whatever decisions he wanted. But with them both holding back in every possible way, Poe doesn't see how they're ever going to move out of the conversational equivalent of holding the door and waiting for the other one to walk through.

 As for him. As for him and Finn. As for--

 Finn smiles (gratefully, a little ruefully) when Poe touches his shoulder, the way a friend would do; he'll come and stand by Poe at the controls and lean against him. But they haven't even kissed again since leaving orbit. It's not just because the bunks on the tub are decisively made for one apiece, and it's not just because of how things are with him and Rey, though it might--Poe isn't sure--be because of how things are with the three of them.

 If the nights (and hasty afternoons, and sleepy early mornings) of Poe and Finn together, the two of them making their own brief world where only each other mattered--if those are done, that's fine. It's fine. None of that is as important as Finn being free, being himself, doing what he wants to do. And if Poe never again gets to feel what he felt when he and Finn and Rey did ... whatever they did, and maybe don't think about it too much right now, Dameron, keep your eye on the artificial horizon ... that's also fine, maybe a person only gets one experience like that in their lifetime. Maybe it wouldn't even _be_ like that every time, or ever again. And neither of these people is in the galaxy for his personal gratification.

 "You can talk to me about it if you want. Maybe I can help. You let me talk to you when--"

 "I just don't want to make you deal with it, it's my fault, I have to undo any damage I did."

 And in a way, all of this is a welcome distraction from what might be happening back at base, where for all they know the heart of the Resistance has already stopped beating. Poe tries to think about it like a strategist, to imagine his way through the worst: if she's dead or dying, that leaves Statura and Ackbar next in the chain of command, and they're more than competent and they work fine together. They're complementary, even, Ackbar the tactician who leans to boldness and Statura the manager who errs on the side of caution. Their differences could balance out the rift in the Resistance or rip it wider.

 If it's the latter, and the people who want to strike harder and sooner can retain or requisition enough equipment and personnel, they'll probably do it, and probably fatally. They know through Finn and the other defecting stormtroopers that the First Order sunk a lot of its resources, but by no means all, into Starkiller. They'll be vastly outgunned, but they might do some damage before they die. They'll leave what's left of the Resistance gutted, probably negligible even as a defensive force, left with the choice to run a follow-up suicide mission or to disperse and go underground.

 And what will Poe himself do then, supposing he hasn't followed the first wave of attacks into a fiery death? Follow the _second_ wave of attacks into a fiery death? (It's what he expected, he reminds himself. You could say it's what he wanted.) Head for the Outer Rim, with Finn and Rey in tow, set up as a ... as a what? A mechanic, maybe? Droid programmer? Fucking shuttle pilot?

 He's good at flying, and calculating the odds in an instant, and moving toward danger at speed. He ought to be good at it. It's been so long since he's done anything else.

 

*

 

The moment she hears Connix clear them for landing, Rey enters Force meditation and stays there till they're on the ground, to keep herself from panicking.

 It's the middle of D'Qar's day. People are busy. The landing field's close to empty, the squadrons must be up practicing formations. It's not like the time they got back from their first and last mission together, when it seemed like half the base was there to greet them. The transport's hatch opens, and they walk out, and a few people from the ground crew converge--one of them slaps Poe on the shoulder and they exchange some kind of complicated handshake.

 "Connix said the General left orders to send us to the medbay if we came in," Poe's saying, and Rey can hear the relief. She's walking between him and Finn, getting her planet-legs back, trying to stay in that state of timeless time where everything matters exactly the same amount, where everything is in abeyance. They cross the base; her skin prickles. She always sweats more here--D'Qar's too humid for a desert-dweller, and when she took her first full breath here she thought she was drowning--but she knows it's not because of that.

 Although Rey's been trying to keep her Force-awareness damped down, she feels Leia before she sees her, as ardent but more _flickering_ than Rey remembers. Still, she's not swathed in the medbay linens, but upright in a chair, and her brother's sitting on the edge of the bed.

 Faced with her teacher, Rey experiences an urge to run more intense than the one that led her off-planet in the first place. The General's asking questions and Poe and Finn are answering them, but Luke's just looking at her, and she knows that any moment his mouth is going to open or--worse--his mind will reach out to hers and ask her to explain herself. She's ready. She even practiced, on the way in, what she was going to say, with no excuses, and planned how she'd hold still while he responded however he was going to respond, but she feels the pull of that open doorway behind her like a gravity well. He gets as far as, "Rey," before the General says, in a voice like durasteel, "I want to talk to Rey alone."

 Luke glares. "There are things I need to know."

 "You'll know them. But I need to talk to her first. Finn, Dameron, dismissed. I'll have more questions for you later."

 "It's good to see you, General," Poe says lightly. They leave. Leia fixes her gaze on her brother. "You too. Out." A thought passes between them that's so intense and private, Rey can feel it like a blaster charge going past but can't interpret it; it ends with Luke all but rolling his eyes and heading for the door, saying only, "I'll still need to speak to you, Rey. Come and find me when you're done here."

 He closes the door behind him. Rey realizes she's in a fighting stance and consciously releases it. She and Leia look at each other.

 Leia says, "We felt what you felt, here. Luke and I. He was with me when it happened. That's probably what he wants to talk to you about, among other things. I want to talk to you about anger, and power. At the moment I just want you to listen."

 Rey takes her at her word, and says nothing.

 "I've been angry for most of my life," Leia says, "what with one thing and another. I've also been more powerful more often than most people. I'm not going to tell you not to get angry, and I'm not going to tell you not to be afraid, and I'm not going to hold myself up as any kind of example for what to do with your power or your anger. But I can tell you that _you_ need to know what you'll do with them. You need to face not just what you've done but what you _could_ do. Do you know more about that, now? That's a real question."

 What Rey really wants to know is if Leia is angry at _her_ , now, this moment, but she recognizes that that isn't what's important. "I think so. I almost killed Finn. I might have, except--"

 "From what I can gather," Leia says, "you didn't end up doing that much damage. You didn't kill Finn, or Poe, or Chewbacca, or anyone, actually, if what they told me is true. You didn't die. You didn't reveal our plans or the location of our base to the First Order, or to Snoke, and ultimately you didn't ... didn't fall. But--"

 "But I could have."

 "Exactly. And that you didn't mostly comes from other people's skill, or other people's foolishness. I almost can't _believe_ that they didn't try to find out anything about the Resistance from you, except that if they had, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you. But the point is that you didn't control the things that were available to you to control, and when you did make decisions, they were stupid. People with the kind of power we have can't afford that." Her mouth tightens. "Some of my lessons in this have come at a very, very high price. Yours was relatively cheap. I want to make sure you learn it. Because if you _don't_ learn it, you'll put my people and the work we do at risk again."

 _And me, if that means anything to you._ Rey hears the thought without stretching for it at all; it reaches her heavy with bitterness and sorrow. She wants to put her arms around Leia, like she did before she left for Ahch-To. She wants them to share what they can--even mistakes and guilt and loss. Instead, she says, "I'll remember."

 "Do that," Leia agrees. " _Practice_ it. Go away and practice it. I should send you right to Luke, but if you want to walk slowly and maybe take a detour by your men's quarters I don't think anyone can prove how long we spoke together."

 "Oh. They're not my--I don't know if they're--I don't know about that, now."

 "I shouldn't have brought it up," Leia says, more gently than she's said anything so far.

 

*

 

Finn and Poe part ways once they leave the medbay: Poe touches Finn's hand and says, "Come find me if you want me," still keeping his voice light, and lopes off to get updates from Mosse and Pava about the planned offensive.

 Finn knows he should talk to the admirals, see if the plan has changed any while they've been away and see if there's anything useful they can glean from the conversations he had with Yaro and Dau, who defected in the wake of the fight with Kylo Ren and are working their way back to D'Qar with Chewbacca. The conversations did more in the way of deconditioning than of gathering intel, and he doesn't remember them perfectly. He does know that after the Light blasted out his consciousness, they helped to bring him back to himself.

 Maybe that's what he needs right now. He walks toward the armory where he expects his fellow defector Tiesse will be working, nodding at the one or two people he passes who seem pleased to see him back. But only Hadrian Serrit and his two droid assistants are there. "Tiesse is meeting with Tyek," Serrit tells Finn between dissatisfied prods at a disassembled firing mechanism. "They're going to Eregi with the inoculation mission. Which I get, they're more than capable of it, but it leaves me out an assistant." He looks at Finn the way he might look at a piece of artillery he's never seen before. "I don't suppose you include weapons engineering on your list of skills?"

 Finn shakes his head. "Just basic blaster maintenance and repair." He likes Serrit for the care he's taken of Tiesse, but he doesn't like that look, and he doesn't want to linger. "Tell them I stopped by, if they come back later."

 It's the other defector, XP-0193, who finds Finn as he's standing irresolutely on a side path that leads through the woods, and touches his arm. XP-0193 still wears his trooper armor and black undersuit, every time Finn's ever seen him. (He must wash the undersuit, because he doesn't stink, but Finn doesn't know when.) The steep verticals of his face fold into an expression that means, more or less, _I acknowledge that we're in the same place and I'm not unhappy about it,_ and he touches Finn's wrist in greeting.

 "Hey," Finn says. "Good to see you too. You wanna walk with me for a bit?" Their steps match easily, the discipline in hips and knees and spine that never really goes away.

 Finn would feel responsible for XP-0193, except that the man is so clearly responsible for himself. According to Tiesse, he's never spoken. He seems equally poised and equally remote in any circumstances; during their infiltration mission, Finn saw him slip back into stormtrooper routine like he was coming home. But he was the first to take his helmet off when the two were captured, and it was at his urging that Tiesse began to fight their conditioning.

 The three of them share a set of rewards and fears and triggers and habits of mind and reference points, things that no one else in the Resistance has undergone or done. Just for that, being around them is restful. But thinking of the other troopers he's worked to decondition, especially the ones on the First Order space station, Finn's beginning to wonder if there might be more to it. Even just walking together now, his head feels clearer, and there's a little more ease in XP-0193's habitually grave expression. He says, thinking out loud, "It reinforces itself. Each other. Deconditioning does. Maybe it needs someone who can use the Force"--it still feels strange to think about himself as such a person--"to get it started? But then it spreads. When I thought I was helping you, well, I was, but you were helping me."

 It's breathtaking. If he's right, and it _feels_ right, this means that running under the discipline and intimidation, the rigidity, the _armor_ of the First Order is this swift stream of possibility, not just fast and deep but swelling with each passing day. He says, "I gotta talk to Skywalker. You know your way back?" XP-0193 makes the face that means, more or less, _Of course, idiot person that, despite your idiocy, I still care about._ It's strangely reassuring. Finn takes off at a run.

 It's not far, and he hasn't even broken a sweat by the time he reaches the training room, and it's only as he pauses in front of the door that he realizes he headed straight for it because he knew where Skywalker was. Knew without asking, without listening. He files that under "weird Force shit to not think about right now" and goes in.

 He sees Rey before he sees Skywalker, and wonders why he didn't feel her too, after all those days attuned to her. Then he realizes it's because she's deliberately damping her power down, masking herself. He can't see her face, but her stance is chastened, and the slope of her neck breaks his heart. Skywalker, facing the door, looks unsurprised. He says to Rey, "Now see if you can keep the restraint but open up your awareness." She must have succeeded, because she turns, wide-eyed and fierce, to stare at Finn. Before he can stop himself he thinks, _That's better,_ and she hears it, and her face floods red and her head drops.

 "He's not wrong," Skywalker says, meaning he must have heard it too. "We're not trying to lock you out of your power, Rey, we're trying to shape it. Finn, I'm glad you're here, you should practice with us."

 "We've figured out a lot," Rey admits. "I can't do the Force blade here. I don't know if I needed to draw on Snoke's power to do it, or if I just have to be really angry." Then she clearly remembers what she tried to do with that blade and that anger; her face reddens again and she looks miserable. Finn just lets it hang there, even though part of him hates to see it.

 Skywalker says into the silence, "Can the two of you try to do what you did before? Finn, Rey said that _you_ said you 'made a path for the light.' Can you do that again? And Rey, can you reach for the darkness, try to meet him, create that balance?"

 Their eyes meet; Rey's hold a plea. Finn puts aside his own errand for the time being and says, "I can try."

 Taking off his armor. Becoming a channel for a river of possibility to run in. He keeps his eyes steady on Rey, the way he did before. He loves her, he does. That isn't the point here; nothing that belongs to him is. But it's caught up in the light that he can feel gathering behind him, seeping through him, and surely she can feel it too.

 But she's shaking her head. "I can't reach it," she says, or Finn thinks she says; his knees feel weak under him, his mouth tastes strange, he has to sit down. Skywalker's saying, "Let it fade slowly, Finn," and it's like there are rainbows of sound around his voice, refracting. "Put your head down if you need to, close your eyes, let yourself shut it out." Put the armor back on. It's not what he wants to do.

 Rey is squatting in front of him. "Are you okay?"

"I just need a sec. I could try and make you mad again," he tries to joke. "Would that work?"

 She's not having it. "I don't want you to hurt yourself for me anymore."

 "Rey," says Skywalker, and there's an edge to his normally patient voice, "it isn't for you, exactly. I don't want Finn to hurt himself either, but judging by what I felt, we're talking about the balance of the Force in the entire galaxy. It could--it's not even accurate to say it could win this war for us. If you could sustain it, I believe that it could _stop_ the war. It could certainly weaken Snoke's grasp on power and his hold on the people who serve him. Even if you can't sustain it for long, it could... _show_ the galaxy what it's like to be in balance. I don't know if I can explain it better than that. But I don't think we can afford to pass up this chance."

 With an effort, Finn stands, and Rey does too, with that fluidity of motion he'd probably still admire if she were trying to kill him again. He says, "Rey, listen. We know you can touch the Dark Side"--Poe's right, it does sound stupid--"and not give yourself to it completely. We know it because you did it. I was there, I felt it. I don't think you need to worry--I mean, you do need to _worry,_ but I think you can be confident that you won't fall."

 "If you're there?"

 "I'm here, sure. But I need you to be there too. You saw me just now. If I did that much longer it'd burn me out, I think, without you." He holds out his hands. "Maybe this is dumb, but--"

 She places her hands in his, thin and callused, and grips strongly. "Let's try it," she says, and she sounds again like the girl who stole the Millenium Falcon, who with her courage and skill and _will_ transmuted danger into triumph and joy. It's the note he heard in Poe's voice, the light he saw in his face, when they broke out of the Finalizer. He thinks, _Maybe I'm just bound to love this wherever I see it._

He opens his mind again, but has to stop even sooner. Rey's shaking her head, but even without that he'd know it didn't work; there's nothing to answer him, nothing to meet him.

 "Think," Skywalker says, when Finn gets his breath back. "What was different?"

 "Rey was out for my blood," Finn offers; he's not going to let that one go. "We were on an entirely different planet, moon, whatever, but that wouldn't make a difference, right? Poe was there, and Chewie. Kylo--" He stops. "It couldn't be that. Could it?"

 They're both staring at him. "It could," Luke allows. "It could explain why Rey's having trouble now, but not when he was there. His path is--better-established. If she has access to the light through you, and the darkness through him, and she can use her power to balance them, that might get us where we're trying to go."

 "You've got to be fucking kidding me," Finn says.

 

*

 

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," Poe says.

 "That's what _I_ said."

 "That sadistic shit-streak is necessary to restore balance to the Force, is what you're telling me."

 "Skywalker thinks so. And I guess it makes sense."

 "Did you tell him about the deconditioning thing too?" They're in Poe's quarters, where Finn went because Poe had said to come find him if Finn wanted him. Finn has already led off with his realization about deconditioning, to sort of ease Poe into things. It's been a long day. "Yeah," he says. "He thinks it's probably right, but he says trying to do this other thing is more important."

 "And you? What do you think?" They're not touching, not even close. Poe's quarters are spacious enough to make that possible without feeling too cramped, but Finn yearns for it anyway, even in the face of all the reasons why it would be a bad idea: too much, too distracting, too many questions they just don't have the power to answer right now, too many rifts still to heal in their trust. He almost regrets kissing Poe again back on the moon where they found Rey, except it's not actually possible for him to regret that. His whole body feels neglected, uncomforted.

 "I'm not sure," he says slowly. "On the face of it, it seems like he must be right. The Force is everything. In everything. If you balance it, you balance everything. If there's balance, you don't need to fight, because things are how they're supposed to be. Right?"

 "I don't know. This is way above my pay grade." Poe frowns. "When you're flying, you want to stay on course, right? But you don't stay on course by putting the controls in one position and leaving them there. You're always adjusting, responding, correcting, recorrecting. You unbalance a little, then you rebalance, then you overdo it, then you go back. Overall you stay up and you get where you're going. But it doesn't mean nothing goes wrong and it doesn't mean nothing is changing."

 "I think Skywalker's idea is that the Force is so far out of balance that it can't do that for itself. He said that maybe what Rey does could sort of show it how to be balanced again. But she wouldn't be stuck doing it forever." He stops in horror, thinking of Rey suspended the way she stood in front of him during their fight, caught between Dark and Light. "She wouldn't. Would she? Would he make her--"

 "I don't think anyone's gonna have a great time getting Rey to do anything she doesn't want to do," Poe points out. "She might insist on it, though."

 Because she feels guilty. Well, he can understand that. If you do damage, you have to find some way of undoing it, or making amends for it, or living with it, or dying of it. Even when you're free, you bind yourself.

 Poe adds, "I really don't wanna go back out looking for Kylo Ren. That's the exact opposite of what I want. I wish Chewie'd been able to hold onto him."

 "Yeah, he could be anywhere by--" Finn frowns. "Wait. How'd she find him in the first place?"

 Poe shrugs. "Another Force thing I don't understand?"

 "Yes! I mean, maybe--I'll be right--" he stops, because Poe has moved, fast, and has a grip on his arm. They stare at each other, rigid: Finn could shake Poe off in a second, and they both know it. Poe says carefully, "It's the middle of the night. The second moon is up. Rey and Skywalker and the General are probably all asleep. Just think for a second if they need to know this right now or if the morning would be okay. I never thought I'd say this, but you look like hammered shit. You can do what you want, but I strongly encourage you to lie down on this bed and close your eyes. Or go back to your quarters if you want, that's fine if you don't want to stay here, but..."

 Finn's quarters seem very far away to him, and Poe seems very close. "What about you?"

 "I'm too wired to sleep, and I have all these updates to read through anyway." He waves a hand at the datapad on his desk. "If I do get sleepy I'll just doze off right here. If you stay."

 "I want to stay," Finn says, having come to a decision. "And when you're ready to sleep I want you to get in the bed with me, and put your arms around me, and sleep next to me. I don't know if I want anything besides that, but I want that, if you do." He sees Poe's mouth getting ready to form a question and adds, "Do me a favor and don't try to protect me from myself here, okay? But you can protect yourself from me. If you need to, if it's too--too something, I don't know--I can go back to my room. I'm just saying what I want, but you don't have to give it to me."

 Poe thinks; Finn can tell because he takes his thinking pose, a hand pushed through his curls near his forehead, head bowed, other hand clenched on his knee. After a minute or so of this he says, "I think you better go back to your room. I don't mean, like, forever, I'm not being noble or anything, I just--you know what you want. And I need to think about what I want. Okay?"

 "Okay," Finn says, standing. "Will you tell me?"

 "Yeah. Soon. I'll tell you soon."

 It occurs to Finn on the way back to his quarters that it had better be soon, because they may not have much longer. The implementation date for the two plans is six days away. But he also realizes that this is the first time Poe's said no to him, other than a simple, "Hey, I want to but not right now, try me again in the morning." It feels strangely good, almost like a beginning. He's too tired to think about why this is.

 

*

 

Breathe. Hold. Release. Hold. Breathe. Hold. Release. Hold. Breathe, and _reach._ Rey can sense that the darkness is there, but she's cut herself off from it, the way the hull of a ship cuts her off from the void. Release.

 It isn't working this way, and she already knows it can't, but she had to try again. She slumps a little, but straightens up when she feels Finn approaching the clearing, tenses and poises as if for a fight.

 Even now, when she can tell he's exhausted and worried about something--was she this attuned to him before? Surely not--he carries warmth and brightness with him. "Hi," she says.

 "Hey. Sorry to bother you when you're practicing, but it's important."

 "I wasn't really practicing," she says. "Not the thing I need to practice. I can't. I can't reach the Dark Side anymore except through the Force bond with Kylo, and I don't want to--I don't even want to _have_ a Force bond with him--why are you making that face?"

 "Because I was coming here to say that. Except I didn't know about the Force bond, but I thought there might be something, because you found him when you left."  

 She thought about it all night, if thinking's the right word. More like hovering in her own mind, feeling a kind of lopsided weakness or constraint where once she reached for raw, howling power and made it her own. Exhausting her options, one at a time; feeling what it would take to reach out, to walk down the only path that remains. Wondering what will happen if she does, or if she doesn't--When. When she does.

 "Sit with me," she says now, sitting down herself on a fallen tree and patting a spot beside her. "At least I don't have to be in the same place as him. That's what I thought at first."

 It feels good to have Finn close to her. He says, "Is it from when you--when he--on Starkiller?"

 "I don't think so," she says, and draws up gentleness from somewhere to say it with, because she knows he still worries about her, imagines the worst; she knows he saw Poe after a session with Kylo Ren, in pain and discarded and ready to die. "It was already there, then. It must be from when I was really little, before Jakku and everything, 'cause I don't remember it. But that doesn't matter. I used it to find him, you're right, and it's what I used before, back when--before, and I can use it for this. I think. I _will_ use it," and she sets her jaw.

 "You don't have to," he says. "Rey, you don't have to. That's the other thing I wanted to say. You don't have to let them use this, if you don't want to."

 "I know that. I do want to. You felt it a little, didn't you? What it was like? How it could be?" That vast, complete, roofless feeling, the living connection with everything, _of_ everything, balance restored, barriers broken. "That's what I want."

 "Yeah, I felt it." He smoothes the fabric of his pants over his thighs, and she twists her own hands together to keep from covering his. "I just don't think--from what I know about the Order, I don't think that would be enough to stop the war."

"Oh. No. I don't think so either. I don't even think Luke does. It might do something about--about Snoke, like when it happened before, it shook him loose from my head, sort of." She doesn't shake now, thinking about it, but she does have to hold herself very still. "He just wanted blood and pain and death and betrayal," she says, her voice sounding remote to herself. "It feeds him somehow. That's what he wanted, as much of that as possible. That's why he's helping them, he thinks they'll lead the galaxy down the bloodiest path. He thought I wanted that, too, he kept holding it out to me like--like a prize."

 "That's not what they want," Finn says. "Or not what they say they want. They want everyone to be afraid of them, compliant, I guess. Obedient. Like I was. I wonder if they know. Have you told the General and the admirals about that? About Snoke?"

 "No, I--" --Was distracted. Was ashamed. Was trying to be good.

 "It's a little important, Rey."

 "I'm sorry," she says, not meaning it, feeling anger rise in her. It helps to watch his face, to see the reality of him. "Could they survive without Snoke? The Order?"

 "Let's walk and talk? I can tell them all of that, I'm supposed to meet with them now anyway, if you want to keep training." He holds out a hand to help her to her feet, which she obviously doesn't need, but it makes her smile a little. "That part I don't know," he says in answer to her question. "I don't know how much of what they do, the way they consolidate their power, how much of it depends on him, or revolves around him. Conditioning might have a Force component to it, somehow, but I might just think that because I think the Force helps people undo it."

 "Yeah, you said yesterday." There's a tension in him, she notes; his shoulders are high, his head stubbornly forward, but she doesn't want to ask about it in case he's worried about her being in his mind. She isn't, but it's not exactly like knowing someone without the Force, or like observing someone she doesn't know. There's a shape Finn's presence makes. She can feel it change. She would know if it ceased. She says, meaning it this time, "I'm sorry."

 "For trying to kill me?"

 "I--that, of course that! But I meant for making you feel what I felt, before. I said I would never do it, and then I did it, so I don't know if you'll believe me when I say I'll never do it again."

 He doesn't respond right away. They've cleared the forest edge by now and are crossing the main expanse of the base, beaten to dust--it's the dry season now--by so many people's passing. They draw a few eyes, a few whispers. Just before they reach the command center he says, "If I wanted you to?"

Rey's heartbeat drops into her pelvis and pulses there. "If you wanted me to," she says, "I don't know. Are you _asking_ me to?"

 "Right now I'm just saying 'if'. I'm thinking about things. Not just that. But that."

 Memory and imagination swell and ache in her, and her skin feels too tight. She says, "I can't really do 'if' with this. I've already bollocksed up too many things. I would have to see what happened, if you asked. And now I have to go practice, and you have to go to your meeting. And Luke says that if you want to be part of this you should come and practice too this afternoon, because we only have a couple days."

 "They want us to do it before the offensive? That makes sense." But he's frowning. It makes her want to kiss his forehead. "Catch up with you later," he says, and turns, and goes.

 With Luke, she works on her equilibrium and her direction, her shielding and her focus and her follow-through, basically everything that she can do _around_ the thing she has to do, to prepare her to do it well. Lets her fury--at Luke, at Kylo, even at Finn a little, at herself--rise and dissipate, rise and dissipate. When Finn joins them, she's already sweating and drained, but rallies as best she can. It's grueling--"Hard now, easy later," Luke says for the thousandth time--but now and then throughout the afternoon she feels and knows that he can feel the perfect complement they make, the harmony they're in. It's none the worse for her anger. It's better.

 

*

 

"You could come with us," Tiesse says near Finn's left ear, over the buzz of the little laser trimmer. "To talk to the people on Eregi. Tyek wants us--well, me, le wants me--to talk to them there about being stormtroopers, why they should fight back when the Order invades. And about how to fight them best, like what to expect. You know all that too. We could talk to more people."

 They're in the gardens, Tiesse standing and Finn on the bench. Tiesse has assured him that hair clippings break down into soil eventually; he doesn't know how they know. He asks, "You feel okay about that?"

 "Well, yeah," they say, assessing him from the front, then moving around to trim the other side. "If I didn't, I wouldn't do it--stop leaning, hold still, or I can't make it even. Do you not feel okay about it?"

 Finn doesn't know how to answer that. The things that Tiesse is going to tell the people of Eregi are good things to know, things that might help to keep them alive and free. Tiesse is a good person to do the telling: to them, no question is a dumb question, and their years working in tandem with the silent XP-0193 have made them unusually good at picking up on what people want but can't or won't say. He says, "I'm starting to feel a little like a weapon again," though talking to Tiesse, their mind that they work so hard to keep clear, is already making him feel less like one.

 "That's a mistake," they say seriously, turning off the trimmer so it comes out louder than maybe they meant. "You look sharp, I did a good job."

 "You got a mirror?"

 A smile, small but real. "You think I carry a mirror around? Go look at yourself in the rain barrel." Finn does, but the reflection is so shaky and twilit, with a yellowing sunset behind him, that it's hard to tell the difference.

 They walk back to the mess and eat together. Tiesse brandishes the trimmer at Yajra, one of the other people on the base with hair like theirs and Finn's; she fluffs it at them now and calls out in mock indignation, "Not yet, quit pressuring me." Yajra was Tiesse's jailor when they and XP-0193 were first captured, and it surprises Finn, and touches him, to see them on these terms. He says, "You doing everyone's hair now?"

 "Just our kind. Hadrian still braids mine when I want it braided, though, I can't do it backwards and upside down." They take a cautious bite of something greenish-gray, nod with approval, and say around the next bite, reflectively, "I like doing things I could still do if the war was over."

 "I can't think that far ahead," Finn says, and it comes out harsher than he meant it to.

 "Okay," Tiesse says, taking another bite.

 The night passes, and the day, and the night after that. He practices with Rey in the daytime, while Poe's with the strategy team writing flight plans and the pilots doing drills. He sleeps alone, dreams of water running underground, fast and deep, waiting to break through.

 Rey says she wants to try to hold the balance in the training room because she's comfortable there, and it's funny to see all the higher-ups gathered solemnly along the wall where the free weights are kept. General Organa is there, in a hoverchair. Poe is there, the first time Finn's really seen him since the night they got back. They hold each other's gaze for a long moment.

 There's no real reason for him and Rey to take each other's hands. At this point, they probably don't even need to be in the same room to do this, maybe not even on the same world or in the same system. But they do, facing each other in the hushed room with its aura of old sweat. The folding wall is open, letting in a breeze that smells like dust.

 They've agreed that he should start, because that's what worked last time. He looks into Rey's resolute face and removes the armor in his mind, piece by piece, keeping his eyes on hers. Light blazes through him, and he knows he can't keep this up for long.

 Dimly, he feels Rey drop a barrier in her mind and reach outward.

 Feels darkness flow toward her, run along her like a wire.

 Feels the lash of Rey's own fury curling out to intertwine with it.

 Feels her take a breath as if it's with his own chest, and the world changes.

 It isn't killing him anymore to let the Light pass through him. He's poised, unburdened. _Everything_ is, everyone in the room, the room itself. Rey's grip loosens and she stands free of him, both hands held out and cupped like scales.

 It lasts however long it lasts, and then she lets her hands fall, slowly, a low-gravity motion, and the balance subsides with a sickening lurch. Finn and Rey both sink to their knees and he wonders distantly if somewhere, Kylo Ren is doing the same. If anyone is running to him the way Poe is running to them, shouldering past his superior officers, dropping between Rey and Finn and pulling them close. Asking them something, maybe, but Finn's ears are refracting sound so much that he can't understand; he just shakes his head against Poe's shoulder. Rey's knee bumps his, sending a shockwave through him. Her face is open, blazing, fully real. Everything around him is confusing, but his mind is as clear as a burnt field.

 Much later, when everyone's dispersed looking tender and stunned and he's back in his quarters and has drunk a lot of water--the return to himself seems quicker this time, and even Rey walked out under her own steam--he writes and sends two internal comms, one to General Organa and her staff, and one to Poe and Rey. It seems like the most efficient way.

 

*

 

When Poe knocks on Finn's door and it opens, he sees Rey already sitting there, hugging her knees in a corner of the bed and looking fierce and mutinous. Finn is in the chair, looking extra handsome--he's done something different to his hair. Poe sits on the far end of the bed, the one that sticks out into the room, and says, "What did you want to talk to us about?"

 "He's leaving," Rey blurts.

 Poe's guts turn to water. "Oh," he says.

 "I think I can help free more stormtroopers," Finn says, in a voice that makes it clear he's saying it for the second time. "Help them free themselves. But I have to be where they are to do it, at least to get it started. It's more important than anything I can do here."

 "You can do a lot here," Poe argues, automatically. "You're a good planner, a good analyst, you've got good command instincts, you can give us stuff we can't get from any--" Finn's just looking at him, half-irritated, half-sad. "I'm sorry," Poe says. "I know. I really-- It was just a reflex, but it was a stupid reflex, and I'm sorry. It wasn't about what you should do, I believe you about that, it was about--appreciating you, but it came out wrong. If you wanna go, go, it'll be the right move, obviously, it always is." He really needs to stop _talking._ His eyes feel hot, the bridge of his nose tight, like a shift in cockpit pressure.

"It's not for the Resistance," Finn says. "It's for them. Us."

 "I promise you I get it."

 "I get it too," from Rey in her corner. "I just don't _like_ it."

 Finn turns to look at her, his gaze gentling. "I wish I could go and stay at the same time," he says. "I wish we could all just stay. But since we can't, this is where I want to go."

 "Did you tell the General?" Poe asks.

 "I asked her for a meeting. I'll tell her about it tomorrow. If she has a problem with it--I don't really have a plan for that. I should probably make one, huh? Especially since I could use intel she has, about ships and troop movements and so on." He's talking too much, too, Poe knows the signs--who better? "But I wanted to tell the two of you first, because I love you both, and I wanted you to know. And to see if you wanted to try--" He stops. "I want to do what I'll still want to do if we all live," he tries again. "With you."

 Poe is still too stuck on "I love you both" to get much out of that sentence--the last time he heard it from Finn was in a very different context--and it's Rey who steps in with the kind of bluntness that comes from being very nervous: "You wanna have sex again."

 "If you do." Incredibly, he _smiles,_ and Poe actually feels himself start forward in his chair, like a nightfly to a source of light. "For practice. It's important to practice, right? In case we all make it."

 That's too much for Poe to think about and definitely too much for him to feel, so like a coward he passes it to Rey, still curled around herself and looking defiant. "What do you think, brujita?"

 "I want to," she says to her kneecaps.

 "You don't sound sure."

 Her head comes up then and she looks at him with the full, scorching power of the desert sun. "I am very sure," she says.

 "What about you?" Finn asks, looking directly at Poe. "You said you'd tell me soon. Soon is now, I guess, but I'm kinda forcing your hand here, so I know you'll tell me if you don't want to."

 "You're not forcing my hand," Poe says. "Just circumstances. I have to leave too, y'know, we're flying out with the rest of the strike team in two days." _Also you upped the ante real fast on this one,_ he doesn't say. "A couple ground rules, which we should've had from the beginning but I guess that ship has left atmo. We say what we want. Anybody wants to stop, we stop. Anybody else have any requirements?" They shake their heads. "And Rey, I _really_ don't want Kylo Ren to be part of these proceedings in any way, shape or form. Can you make sure that doesn't happen?"

 "I can," she says. "It'll be like having to hold something in my hand the whole time, but I can do it. But I won't be able to bring us together like I did before, I'll have to be closed down. Maybe that's a good thing. But you--" she's looking at Finn now--"said you might want that."

 This is a surprise to Poe, but then the whole situation is so cracked and jerry-rigged and precarious and strange, all of them fully dressed and not touching and shy, nothing like the almost-unquestioned currents that dragged the three of them into bed together the first time. Living in the mess that first time made, but together, alive, this moment. Finn says, "I'm fine without it," and Rey says, "Come here then," and Poe watches Finn reach out to her, their mouths meet, his hand come up to the nape of her neck. Finn kisses Rey's throat and her collarbone and her hands, lifts his arms for her to take his shirt off and kiss his chest, and Poe keeps watching, his heart tightly wrung. He doesn't _know_ her, not the way she and Finn know each other, barely even in the ordinary way, and yet that stops mattering when Rey turns her head away from Finn's mouth and says, "Can you come here too?"

 He scoots awkwardly up the bed and leans into her, gives himself over to her mobile mouth while Finn kisses the back of her neck, and it might not be easy but at least it's reasonable to take hold of the ties of her shirt and look a question at her, to let each breathy "yes" guide him down to the point of one breast, over the ribs that still stick out a little, the slope of her belly. "Stand up with me?" he says. "I want to get on my knees for you, get my mouth on you, do you want that?"

 "I want it," she says, her face flooding with brilliant color. It makes him feel crazy, so he kisses Finn across her shoulder, which makes him feel crazier. They half-scramble, half-slide to their feet. Finn asks in her ear, "Can I hold you like this?" and he must get some kind of positive response that Poe can't hear because they're standing with Rey between them, Finn's arms wrapped around her so the backs of his hands are pressed against Poe's belly for a moment before Poe sinks to the floor, kissing indiscriminately as he goes.

 She steps out of her trousers and underdrawers, narrowly avoiding kneeing him in the face and stammering, "Sorry," and it's unbearably touching to him because her awareness and control of her body in space is usually so complete. When she has her balance back, he runs his hands down her legs, silky hair and skin over corded muscle, and back up to her inner thighs, feeling her shiver, and he can't help but think of how many people were looking to her today, how many people she's _been_ today. "This is for you," he says. "Only for you, Rey, no one else. If you decide you don't want it, say so, or just push me away. Understood?"

 "Yes," she says, far above him, just a thread of sound, but enough for him to follow upward, into a cloud of rough hair and soft flesh, that incredible taste like nothing else, individual to her as a fingerprint. He knows her this way, at least. He licks and sucks in obedience to the sounds she makes, feels her tense and shudder and sweat. She presses back against Finn before angling sharply again toward his mouth. And those are Finn's hands falling heavy on his shoulders, holding him there for her. He gasps, she feels it, grinds against his tongue and teeth, and then all of a sudden she's shoving at his head impatiently and digging down with her own hand, rolling her clit between thumb and middle finger and shouting and slumping. He kisses her thighs, wetly and gently, as she shakes and shakes again and slowly quiets.

 "Sorry," she says again from behind damp strands of hair. "I just--I needed it."

 "You don't have to be sorry for that." He gets up stiffly, sits on the bed again, holds out his hands--to her, to Finn, he doesn't know, but he's feeling a little extraneous at the moment and when Finn straddles his lap and kisses him, relief is as strong as desire. He hears Rey say, "He still has his boots on. Poe, you still have your boots on," and she actually takes them off for him while Finn's kisses slowly increase in sloppiness and zeal, his weight and insistence pushing Poe back to the mattress.

 It's been a couple weeks at most, but he had gotten his mind around the probability of never having this again. And he accepts that it won't be easy, won't be transcendent, won't be the same, might be alright. Might be alright. It's a totally different feeling from accepting that he might die soon. Rey's settled back on the bed and her hands find his hair, pull his head back; Finn kisses along his throat; Rey kisses him upside down, which makes him laugh. He comes hard and fast almost as soon as Finn touches him, lets Rey prop him up for Finn to fuck his mouth and bring tears to his eyes.

 They can't all fit in the bed side by side. Rey solves this problem by lying directly on top of him, one of her hands stretched out for Finn to hold it against his chest. She says, "What if I need to find the balance again?"

 "You can reach for me," Finn says. "If I'm alive, I'll be there. I think I'm getting better at not falling over when you do it, so you _probably_ won't put my life in danger if you do it when I'm doing something complicated."

 "What about me," Poe says, and instantly hates himself for saying it. Hates himself more when Finn just looks at him without saying anything, because what could he say that would both be true and what Poe wants to hear?

 What Finn does is shift closer and reach up with the hand that's not holding Rey's to tilt Poe's face toward his and kiss him for a long time. Rey, meanwhile, rubs Poe's leg with her foot and breathes into his neck. The arm of hers that's reaching out to Finn is like a cable running between them. Poe thinks that if this is what the end of the war feels like, he wants to live through it, and after.

 

 

EPILOGUE

 

The strike team and the inoculation team both left starting at sunrise; the last craft has cleared atmo and it's almost noon. General Leia Organa turns her hoverchair, her shadow compressed below her. The medics say that if her vitals remain steady, she can start walking short distances within the next few days, if they live that long.

 The tensions, the factions, the mutters of mutiny: she can't detect a sign of them, not in people's actions and not in their minds. In the two days before the departure, everyone on the base had worked together in a unity, a harmony, that transcended the brisk and resigned efficiency of preparing for a mission. Power struggles dissolved, and there were fewer attempts to score points off one another. People on the brink of dropping a barbed remark had paused before speaking and gone with a more neutral version. People known for their tempers--including Leia herself--had deliberately, palpably quieted, reaching for the memory of equilibrium and finding it within them.

 And carefully, held in and holding that balance, Leia allows herself to think about her son, about the man he insisted on becoming. About the sense of him that had flowed into her, through Rey: Leia's own anger nourished and transmuted into cruelty, her own fear repeatedly scabbed over and reopened like a wound, her own power grown towering and disproportionate and unwieldy. She wonders if it flowed both ways, if in that moment of entire connection he could feel her too--a version of what he could have become instead.

 She extends her awareness, feels the dot of brightness--growing brighter all the time, even as it gets farther away--that means Finn, moving toward the First Order coordinates she gave him in the perfectly-capable hands of a former shuttle pilot turned Resistance courier. Feels Rey, training earnestly and diligently, poised between Light and Dark, taking everything to heart. Earlier, they stood close to each other while Finn's craft and Poe's squadron took off. Leia was surprised then, not at Rey's ferocity or even at how she'd tempered it, but at how the two of them, Leia and Rey, could lean on each other, askew without falling.

 Feels Luke, which is not surprising, as he's walked up and is keeping pace with her. "You're thinking about them," he says.

 "I didn't need you to come back from exile to tell me what I'm thinking," she says back, but there's no bite in it this time.

 "Yes, you did."

 "Yes," she admits. "I did."

 "I can still feel it," Luke says. "Not the balance itself, but how it was, how it could be again. And something else, like a grip that's loosening--can you feel that?" There's a raw note in his voice, uncertain almost, seeking reassurance, that she never remembers hearing even when they were young--he was always so sure then, or trying to sound sure.

 "I don't have your range," she says, "but I'll trust you." Another version of her earlier question rises, and she speaks it: "Do you think they could feel it flowing the opposite way? Trace it back here?"

"Rey and I worked to prevent that, but nothing's certain, Leia."

 "Wonderful," she says. "Terrific. Walk with me back to the command center."

 There are secondary missions to track, and data to interpret, and reports to wait for. She's eaten nothing since she woke up--she ought to eat. A little monitor rides her pulse at the wrist, sending signals directly to the medbay, but she's supposed to report in by sundown nonetheless. If they live that long. Luke takes her hand and they travel the rest of the way together.

**Author's Note:**

> I started this series, stopped it for a while, started another one, and am completing this one now. In the meantime, my sense of some of these people has changed a lot. This is probably normal in fanfic-land--it's a chance to write the same characters in different ways--but I'm relatively new here and it was tough for me to put these particular boots back on again. That said, I wanted to finish it and play out its ideas and feelings, and I hope it reads well.


End file.
